1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer systems and, more particularly, to the management of storage resources within computer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many business organizations and governmental entities rely upon applications that access large amounts of data, often exceeding a terabyte or more of data, for mission-critical applications. Often such data is stored on many different storage devices, which may be heterogeneous in nature, including many different types of devices from many different manufacturers.
Various software tools exist for managing and/or modifying the configuration of computer systems within such storage environments. For example, there are tools for managing software configuration (e.g. installing and removing software components as desired) as well as for managing hardware configuration. Configuration tools may include various tools for managing the storage devices in the storage environment, and particularly the mapping of volumes, file systems, and other virtual storage devices to physical storage devices. For example, tools involved in the restoration of a computer system from a backup image as well as tools involved in managing storage configuration on a functioning system (e.g. volume management tools and/or file system tools) may manage the mapping of virtual storage devices to physical storage devices. The virtual and physical storage devices may be managed as a hierarchy of storage devices, where, for example, a disk group may contain numerous disks, a physical disk may contain one or more volumes, and a volume may contain one or more file systems.
In many cases, e.g., as part of recovery after a hardware failure, mapping tools may be used to help restore a saved source storage hierarchy using a new set of target storage devices. The new set of target storage devices may differ from the devices used in the source storage hierarchy configuration: for example, they may differ in size, in functional capabilities such as caching, in performance capabilities, or in supported levels of availability. A mapping tool may provide one or more interfaces, such as a graphical user interface or a command-line interface, allowing a system administrator to select a target storage device for each source storage device that is to be restored (e.g., to select a target disk device onto which a logical volume of the source hierarchy is to be mapped). In addition, the administrator may be required to map devices at each level of a storage hierarchy in a separate step: for example, first map a source disk to a target disk, then map a source volume whose data resides at the source disk to a target volume at the target disk, then map a source file system built using the source volume to a target file system, etc.
In large storage configurations, where a given source storage hierarchy may include hundreds or thousand of storage devices, performing the mapping one device at a time may be time-consuming and error-prone, even in cases where the target storage devices are similar or identical to the storage devices that may have been used in the source storage hierarchy. It may therefore be desirable to provide a tool or a mechanism that supports hierarchical mapping of a source storage hierarchy, i.e., a tool that automatically creates a mapping for a specified source storage device and all its contained storage devices.